By ANGELA GALLOWAY, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, November 7, 2006

Seattle voters likely doomed the Sonics' future in the city Tuesday -- but don't count the suburbs out yet, the team's new owners said.

"The team fully intends to honor its lease at KeyArena until 2010 and then hopes to relocate to a new facility outside of Seattle, but within King County," Clayton Bennett, chairman of the Oklahoma-based ownership group, said in a statement.

Initiative 91, which aimed to slap down taxpayer-funded subsidies for professional sports teams, was leading by an overwhelming margin Tuesday.

I-91 would prohibit Seattle from supporting teams with city tax dollars unless such investments yield a profit on par with a 30-year U.S. Treasury bond, currently about 4.75 percent.

Chris Van Dyk, who headed the campaign, called any claims that state lawmakers legislators might now authorize a publicly subsidized arena in elsewhere in Western Washington "baloney."

"With this kind of vote in the city of Seattle, it's extremely unlikely that any tax subsidy would make its way through the Legislature, particularly one without a public vote," as Bennett has called for, Van Dyk said. And "on the outside chance that one did, we would work to block it."

I-91 was launched early this year after the previous owners of the Sonics and the WNBA Storm intensified demands for a more lucrative lease and major KeyArena overhaul. The I-91 campaign was bankrolled by the Service Employees International Union.

Jim Kneeland, a local consultant representing Bennett, stopped short of saying there's no chance of a long-term future for the team in the city.

"If you were a betting person, you would assume it will be outside of Seattle," Kneeland said.

There was no organized opposition to the measure, but some civic leaders, including Mayor Greg Nickels, said it went too far.

"We are not in the business (with the city's) opera or symphony or ballet or sports to make money for the city treasury," Nickels said recently.

"What we're trying to do is have a high variety of cultural activities."

Technically, it's unclear how effective the measure might have been at forcing politicians' hands. I-91 would have restricted only city taxes, and Seattle's newest venues were subsidized with county and state revenues.

But Bennett indicated the message it sent was clear.

"Other cities in King County have expressed great interest in becoming the new home of the Sonics," he said.

The new owners insist that they hope to keep the teams in Western Washington. But to stay, Bennett has said, they must have a new arena funded with taxpayer contributions.